Book Binding, Fiber Arts, and a little bit of life in the mix.

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December Theme Posts

I’ve been reading a bunch of the archived “Featured Seller” interviews on Etsy. One of the questions they are all asked is “What is the first thing you can remember making by hand?” This made me start thinking about my answer to this question. There are so many things I can remember making while I was growing up. I’ve decided to write an entry a day for the month of December to cover some of these things. Some of them are from very early in my childhood and some are from my late teen years. Some of the things I’m going to be writing about are things I thought up out of my own little kid brain and some are things that were made for school, church, scouts, 4-H or other group activity. These are in no particular order or age grouping I just wrote down a list as the memories came to me.Since today is Dec. 3rd, I’m going to do a big post to cover the first three on my list.

1. Clay Teepee
2. Hand-painted Ceramic Tile
3. Personal Birthday Cake

When I was in kindergarten, I was lucky enough to be the same age as the daughter of the local pottery teacher. He would often come to our class and teach us various art related things. For Thanksgiving, he brought clay and let us make our own clay teepees. At Christmas he brought ceramic tiles for us to paint holiday scenes on. These we fired and then brought back to us. I think my mom still has my painted tile but I don’t think my teepee survived.

Just before school started the next year, I was invited to a birthday party for the pottery teacher’s daughter. We were each presented with our own personal cake to decorate. Being five years old, you can imagine how freeing this was. There was a big table full of various colored frostings and we were allowed to put what ever we wanted on it. Mine was one big smeared mess but I was so proud of it.